Beyonce holds onto No. 1 spot on Billboard album chart

Beyonce's self-titled album is in its second week atop the Billboard 200 album chart.

Beyonce's self-titled album is in its second week atop the Billboard 200 album chart. (Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press)

Mikael Wood

It arrived like a flash, but now it's sticking around.

"Beyoncé," the self-titled album released without prior notice this month by the superstar pop-soul singer, is spending a second week atop the Billboard 200, reflecting sales of 374,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That follows the record's earlier debut at No. 1, when it sold 617,000 copies between Dec. 13 and 15, the first three days it was available on iTunes.

In a detailed post, Billboard's Keith Caulfield writes that, with one more sales week left in 2013, the album is likely to finish the year among the top 10 sellers, all of which have passed the million-sold mark. So far "Beyoncé" has moved 991,000 copies, making it the 12th-biggest seller of 2013.

Although she skipped the promotion most pop stars do in the run-up to album releases -- this year has seen elaborate campaigns by the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake -- Beyoncé has talked up the record since it first appeared on iTunes, hosting events at New York's School of Visual Arts and a Dave & Buster's restaurant in Times Square.

And last week she appeared at a Wal-Mart store in Tewksbury, Mass., hyping the album's physical edition following its initial release as an iTunes digital exclusive. (Amazon and Target have declined to stock "Beyoncé" CDs in apparent protest of the iTunes deal.)

Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, Garth Brooks maintains his spot at No. 2 with "Blame It All on My Roots," a six-CD/two-DVD box set available only through Walmart. One Direction moves up two spots to No. 3 with its "Midnight Memories," and a pair of holiday albums round out the top 5: "Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas," a "Duck Dynasty" tie-in, is at No. 4, while Kelly Clarkson's "Wrapped in Red" is at No. 5.